David Pogue Goes Hunting the Elements And Makes The Best Chemistry Video for Kids (GeekDad Weekly Rewind)

Periodic table from Hunting the Elements

David Pogue is perhaps best known as the technology correspondent for the New York Times. However, many people will also recognize his face as a host on the PBS program Nova. In 2011, Pogue hosted the series of Nova episodes called Making Stuff, in which Pogue, the technology hound, hunted down the newest technologies to make things stronger, smaller, cleaner, and smarter. This year, Pogue was back with a new program Hunting the Elements, in which he unravels the mysteries of the periodic table and chemistry. Due out on DVD and Blu-Ray this month, this program provides a great way to introduce your children to the 96-odd building blocks in everything.

Now I am the first to admit that not every Nova is built to watch with your kid. However, in the Nova programs he hosts, Pogue exudes a childlike enthusiasm, grade school sense of humor, and plain old-fashioned curiosity in every scene. Whether it is overfilling sensitive equipment at New Mexico Tech, breaking the Gorilla Glass at Corning Corp. or pretending to steal a gold bar he just helped make, Pogue is clearly a kid at heart — and a destructive one at that. His insatiable curiosity and his childlike lack of boundaries take what could be a dry, boring subject and makes it accessible and interesting for kids. They understand him, because he is one of them.

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Build Your Lego Set for a Good Cause

Build a tree

Image by GlobalGiving - Bricks For Good

I could find many good reasons to build and play with Lego bricks. At the top of the list would first come creativity, then education, fun and art. But none of them could equal this project from GlobalGiving called Bricks for Good. When a true good cause meets the best toy ever invented, the result can only be exceptional. The Bricks for Good team has put together three different custom sets of Lego bricks, corresponding to three different charitable causes: Build a Well, Build a School, and Build & Plant a Tree.

The smallest donation, called “Build a Well,” will contribute to building a brighter future for the local population in Ghana, Haiti and certain parts of China, by providing an access to drinkable water and water management infrastructures, such as new wells. In exchange for your contribution, a small Lego Well will be sent to your address as a symbol of your support.

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for June 16

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle, and the previous day’s answer (in invisitext) posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

You’re a 15th-century craftsman living on an island known for its glass near the city that was home to Shylock. Due to your profession, you’re forbidden to leave the island. What is your job?

YESTERDAY’S ANSWER (mouseover to see):

Search [arming doublet] to find that knights wore an arming doublet as a kind of padding or primary protection under their armor. Search [knight servant] to learn that the servant was called a squire.

 

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The GeekDad Manifesto

What does it mean to be a geek dad? Sure, it includes teaching your kids about Star Trek, Skyrim and superheroes. But it’s much more than that. It means showing them how things work and that with a little research, determination and trial and error they can bend the world to their will. It means showing them how to build and make and fix and break whatever they set their minds to. And it means getting them to approach problems with imagination — which makes anything possible. Come join the celebration.

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Join GeekDad Day Events Nationwide

Photo: jencu/Flickr

This Sunday, June 17, we geek out as hard as we can with the first ever National GeekDad Day. That’s right, Wired has taken over Father’s Day — and asked that you join us. We’ve already had over 173,000 individuals sign up to pledge to celebrate and get geeky. What are you and your family going to do?

Don’t have anything planned yet for the fam? Never fear, we’ve partnered with museums and science centers around the country for this special day. We’ve listed interactive exhibits, activities and events below — all centered around science and technology for you and your little ones to explore and learn together.

But wait, there’s more. We want to see and hear about how you celebrate GeekDad Day. Share your images, videos and stories with us. We have a few ways you can do this: If you are on Instagram be sure to tag your pics with the hashtag #GeekDadDay; you can also tweet your images and videos at us with the same hashtag. Other ways to get at us: Share a link in the comments on our GeekDad Day Page and post your photos and videos over at the GeekDad Community Site.

Once the festivities are over, we’ll pull our favorites from everything you’ve shared with us. Keep an eye out for a gallery next week of showing how families everywhere got creative, learned and geeked out.

Arizona Science Center — 600 E. Washington st. Phoenix, AZ 85004
Free general admission (first 200 visitors get a sweet surprise!), 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Special hands-on activities throughout the day, including: baseball and light stick dissection, saltwater batter exploration, build an art bot, make electric play-doh, and paint your own masterpiece.

California Academy of Sciences, The Naturalist Center — 55 Music Concourse Dr., Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA. 94118
Free with admission, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
Bring the whole family to try their engineering skills with LEGO, explore nano science, and much more. Don’t miss a father-themed Science Story Adventures (2:30 p.m. in the classroom next door to the Naturalist Center) for the little visitors.

The Lawrence Hall of Science — 1 Centennial Drive Berkeley, CA 94720
FREE with admission, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Bring the family to make marble machines, experience Tony Hawk Rad Science, and see surfers catch the Ultimate Wave in 3-D.

Chabot Space & Science Center — 10000 Skyline Blvd. Oakland, CA 94619
Skyline Bistro Cafe, advance Reservations: $14 Adults & $7 Kids, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Treat your Dad to a delicious BBQ lunch and spend the afternoon building and racing solar cars, testing dad’s geek-factor, exploring interactive exhibits, taking a hike, watching a show and looking through our telescopes.

Denver Museum of Nature and Science, 2001 Colorado Blvd. Denver, CO 80205
SCFD Community Free Day, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Celebrate your family’s geekiness with a plethora of activities: a paleopuppeteer, a tour of the Museum’s world famous wildlife dioramas, get your face painted, and see, touch, and learn about exotic and colorful animals. Pint-sized craft and science activities will also be on hand for younger visitors.

Saint Louis Science Center, 5050 Oakland Avenue St. Louis, MO 63110
11 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Treat Dad, and the whole family to see one or all of the special exhibits happening: Immerse yourself in models of molecules in Amazing Nano Worlds!, an exhibition exploring the world of nanotechnology, an OMNIMAX Theater film or one of the Planetarium shows.

Liberty Science Center, Liberty State Park, 222 Jersey City Boulevard Jersey City, NJ 07305 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Bring the family and dad to a day chock full of bubbles, animals, and glow-in-the-dark festivities! Be a detective in the dark — learn about UV light, create a chemical concoction to make an instant glow in a test tube and more! Get up close and personal with animals habitats and artifacts such as turtle shells, snake shed, and sea stars.

NYSCI Celebrates National GeekDad Day, 47-01 111th Street Queens, NY 11368
Free with NYSCI admission, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
The Inventor’s Workshop will be open to you and your family, where everyone will be able to use old building materials, tools, and a variety of loose parts to design objects, activities, and inventions. Recommended for ages 6–14.

Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), 1945 SE Water Ave. Portland, OR 97214-3354
Turbine Hall, Free with museum admission, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
Bring your broken or unwanted toys to Toy Tune-Up, the tinker’s workshop. You’ll take it apart, see how it works, and maybe even fix it! Tools and safety glasses provided. Also, see OMSI’s real working steam engine in action, and learn about how steam powered the industrial revolution. Facilitated by the original Steampunk, Physics Educator Craig Reed.

Space Center Houston, 1601 NASA Parkway Houston, TX 77058
10 a.m.-6 p.m.
The live stage show, “It’s All Relative: A Journey Through Space Time” a story of an astronaut’s adventure through time and space will premiere specifically for Geek Dad day. Be sure to check out the 130,000 lb. full-scale shuttle replica, take a tour of mission control and the astronaut training facilities, examine the science of fear in our new summer exhibit Goosebumps, and see the brand-new feature film Human Destiny.

Kids Discovery Museum, 301 Ravine Lane Northeast, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
Free with admission or membership, noon-4 p.m.
Dads and Grandpas enjoy FREE admission
Explore Science Hall, check out the DinoBot exhibit, create recycled inventions, and make a robot or a spaceship … imagination is the limit!.

Tech Shop, Nationwide
Tech shop is hosting events and activities at Menlo Park, California. San Jose, California. San Francisco, and Detroit, Michigan. Please see the site for all of the cool offerings they have scheduled.

Homepage Images: jencu/Flickr

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Build an Awesome DIY Slip ‘n’ Slide for Summer Fun

Illustration by Bradley L. Hill

When I was a kid, I remember building a homemade Slip ’n’ Slide with my friends to have some outdoor fun on a hot summer day. We’d usually cut up a number of black garbage bags and try to overlap them to create a good run. Then turn a sprinkler or two on them, and get busy.

These days, mass-produced Slip ’n’ Slide–type things are available at any big-box store for around $30. They’re big, bright, and even imaginative. Heck, you can drop a couple hundred bucks and get giant inflatable water slides that will fill up your whole yard.

What I’ve found over a few years with my kids and their friends is that the quality of construction usually makes these slides a one- or two-use product. And while I said they were imaginative, they’re usually not that big, since they’re designed for a mass market of people who won’t all have the yard space for a larger slide. So I started to wonder if there wasn’t something that could be done at home, in the DIY spirit of using garbage bags like I did as a kid, but a bit more durable and, you know, BIGGER. And what I came up with is easy to build, hugely fun to play with, durable, and simple to take apart and store for significant reuse.

This project involves building the basic concept of the slip ’n’ slide (SNS) using durable over-the-counter materials. All you need is a $30 roll of heavy plastic, ten $2 pool noodles, a $10 sprinkler hose, and a couple rolls of peel-and-stick Velcro (about $7 a roll).

So what is an SNS at its core? It’s simply a long expanse of material that gets slippery when wet. It should have some kind of guides or berms on the sides to keep sliders from slipping off while traveling down its length. And it needs a water source.

Illustration by Bradley L. Hill

  1. To start, take your roll of heavy sheet plastic and lay it out on your yard or other assembly site. We tried some 6-mil plastic sheeting, 6 feet wide by 50 feet long for our sample slide, since it gave a nice width of sliding surface, and the length fit across our front yard. But, depending on your location, you may want a smaller or bigger (yeah!) slide. Figure out which side is the top (it’s a completely arbitrary decision since both sides are the same, but you have to pick one and stick with it), and place it facedown.
  2. Lay the noodles around the perimeter of your plastic. You can leave a foot or so between each noodle. The standard length of a pool noodle is about 5 feet, so for our 50-foot long slide, we used eight noodles per side with about a foot of spacing, give or take, and then one noodle at either end.
  3. Next, starting at one end, take a noodle and lay it on the plastic a few inches in from the outside edge. Pull the plastic over the noodle as if you’re going to wrap it up, and get enough overlap so about an inch of the plastic from the edge touches the plastic on the other side of the noodle toward the middle. This is where you’ll be sticking the Velcro.
  4. Attach a 2-inch strip of the Velcro to the plastic at each end and in the middle of each noodle so that the plastic wraps over and under the noodle and is attached back to itself. Do this for all the noodles until you have a berm all the way around the perimeter of your slide.
  5. Once you’re done, you have the underside of your slide. Flip it over, and you should have what looks a little like a very long, very narrow emergency slide from an airliner. Or a really cool waterslide.
  6. Last thing we need is the water source. If you’re keeping it simple, just make sure you have a little slope and start running a hose at the top of the slide at the higher end (where you’ll start your slides from). Or if you have one or more lawn sprinklers, use those. For a little more money, pick up a 50-foot sprinkler hose and (if you also got the extra roll of Velcro) affix it to the side of the slide down one of the berms. Use your regular hose to feed water into it and you’ve got a perfect shower down your slide.

Important tip for a flat yard: The best placement for an SNS is on a gentle downhill slope that peters out at the end to flat, but not all of us are lucky enough to have the perfect sliding real estate. If you’re building your SNS on a flat expanse of lawn, an added feature could be of use. Get a piece of rope about 6 or 8 feet long. Tie each end to a short piece of wooden dowel or a plastic handle like the ones that come with car window squeegees or toilet plungers. Make sure you have good knots, and perhaps wrap it all up in duct tape as well. You now have a towline. Position your child to sit at the starter end of the slide, either in a crisscross applesauce position or on his or her front or back, and have someone as big or bigger pull him while running down the slide. Once the initial friction is overcome, it’s not very hard to build up a bit of speed down the slide. Just make sure to have them let go before the end of the slide.

Now just wait for a warm day, collect the neighborhood kids, and become the best house on the block! Oh, and in case you hadn’t noticed, with all that Velcro, this thing is really easy to disassemble and fold away for another day.

This project appears in Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share, from Gotham, available at most bookstores.

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#GeekDadDay Instagram Challenge

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or not reading Wired (which in our world is pretty much the same thing), you’ll know that this Sunday we celebrate the first ever GeekDad Day. Wired has officially taken over Father’s Day and is pulling out all of the stops for this special family of geeks day.
We’ve got our very own landing page here on the blog, listing numerous science centers and museums holding activities and events around the country, as well as loads of great projects to do with the kids, and over 173,000 of us have signed up promising to celebrate and geek out.

But wait, we’ve got one more thing we want to do and we need your help.

We’d like a fly-on-the-wall view of how your family is celebrating geekdom. Whether you’re building a super-cute art-bot or watching Star Wars the right way, be sure to share your images with us via Instagram. Tag your photos with #GeekDadDay and upload them to Instagram. We’re also opening this up to Twitter, so be sure to tag your tweets too! We’ve also set up a special forum for everyone to share their GeekDad Day stories.

Happy GeekDad Day!

Originally posted by:
Nathan Barry
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Tell Us What You’re Doing for GeekDad Day


We are now only two days away from the first ever GeekDad Day. As of right now, over 86,000 people are registered to take part in events in 41 of the 50 United States (plus DC!), and 12 other countries. Heck, there are people registered in New Zealand and Switzerland, which are on opposite sides of the world from each other, so GeekDad day will literally be celebrated ALL AROUND THE WORLD. Cool.

But what’s really important to us is to know how all of you are celebrating your GeekDad Day. We want you to take pictures, take video, and share your stories of family projects and activities with us. Whatever you do, simply tag your media (pictures on Twitter, Pinerest, Flickr, and so on; video on YouTube, Vimeo, or wherever) with “#GeekDadday,” so we can find it. Even better would be to drop a link to your shared items in the comments in the special forum discussion we’ve set up at the GeekDad Day Landing Page, or share your photos and video over at the GeekDad Community Site. And of course, you can tweet them to us at @wiredgeekdad or share them on our Facebook page. At the end of the weekend, we hope to put together a truly awesome gallery of the amazing things each of you did, and let everyone see what celebrating geek family-hood means.


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TableTop Goes Co-Op With Castle Panic

After a nasty game of back-stabbing last week, Wil and his guests elect to play a little kinder and gentler this week with one of the best family-friendly co-op games, Castle Panic. At GeekDad, we are big fans of Castle Panic and Wil and Yuri Lowenthal, Tara Platt, and Andre Meadows show why it’s such a wonderful game during this week’s episode.

Associate Producer Boyan Radakovich says Castle Panic is “a perfect example of what TableTop is about — wonderful chemistry between the players, thoughtful game decisions, and everyone having so much fun it just shines through on camera.”

Can Wil finally win a game? And if it’s a co-op victory, will his triumph be footnoted by a Barry Bonds-like asterisk? Find out by watching this week’s episode!

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Happy Birthday, Neil Patrick Harris!

Neil Patrick Harris

Photo by David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons

So many child actors seem to go on to lousy adult lives, or at least to near-complete obscurity, it’s always nice to see one who not only avoids those fates but becomes even better known for their later acting career. Sure, there are probably plenty of people who still first think of Doogie Howser, M.D. when they hear mention of Neil Patrick Harris, who turns 39 years old today, but way fewer than there used to be — and particularly among geeks.

If you’re a geek, chances are you’ve seen or at least heard about the three-part web series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, directed by Joss Whedon and starring Harris as the title character, along with geek icons Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. If you haven’t seen it, incidentally, you should — and you should also check out his memorable (voice) appearance on Batman: The Brave and the Bold as the villain (created just for him) Music Meister. Between those roles, his many appearances on Broadway, his continuing role as Barney Stinson on the TV show How I Met Your Mother, his appearances in the Harold & Kumar movies (including the upcoming A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas), his hosting the Tony Awards twice and the Emmys once, and his part in the upcoming Smurfs film, it seems like NPH (as he is often referred to) is everywhere. (We’re aware he also appeared in the 1997 movie Starship Troopers, but it was quite a while after that that he really rose to prominence in the geek community.)

We can’t be certain if NPH is a geek, though he is certainly at the very least geek-adjacent. He and his partner David Burtka are the proud parents of twin toddlers, so he’s a dad, if not necessarily a geek dad.

Please join all of us at GeekDad in wishing Neil Patrick Harris a very happy birthday, and many more to come!

A version of this article was published on this date last year.

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